Delivering the Goods is a collaboration between AIANY and Stantec summarizing impacts and opportunities associated with urban freight.

Each year, 365 million tons of freight moves through New York City, and that number is expected to increase 68% by 2045. Recent shifts in consumption and expectations for when and where goods should be delivered have accelerated growth of urban freight ecosystems with real implications for cities. In 2020, the AIANY’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee formed a working group to examine issues and opportunities related to the increasing impacts that result from goods movement in New York. In collaboration with Stantec, the group engaged in research, held listening sessions and interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, and worked with experts to develop a holistic set of policy and design recommendations for balancing goods movement and neighborhood needs to create more livable communities.
The operations and facilities that support goods movement affect a wide range of stakeholders, including communities, industry, and government, as well as those in professional practice whose design work focuses on urban freight and the public right of way. As a conceptual framing tool for our work, we defined the “Interface” between movement and place as an important opportunity for design intervention. In the case of last-mile or final-fifty-feet deliveries, the Interface consists of streets, curbs, sidewalks, doorsteps, and buildings. We used this concept to develop policy and design recommendations for the city, including themes of circular economy, freight consolidation, and sustainable delivery modes.
The Interface concept also begins to convey the complexity of developing strategies for managing freight, as it is influenced, designed, maintained, and governed by a wide range of entities. As a result, components of the Interface are mostly considered independently, but our work posits that it is an understanding of the entire sequence of goods movement that will elucidate the full range of externalities and the strategies that could mitigate them.

Freight is public transportation. It is a utility that every single person impacts. And the more people that understand this, the better. Which is why I’m really excited to see architects examine how zoning, land use and building design can help improve last mile delivery as it brings a critical and often missing viewpoint to this issue.
-Sandra Rothbard, AICP, Founder and Principal, Freight Matters